NGA UK – late but still welcome

If all goes well the Digital Region network should be partly up and running by the end of 2009. But it is an infrastructure project, providing a platform for ISPs rather than providing services to end-users directly. So there could be further delays in take-up before the infrastructure is actually in use.

At the other end of the size scale, a hard-headed project promoted by Kent County Council will use public money to bring broadband to the notspots and slowspots in that county. The first end-users should be online during 2009, and if the economics look reasonable this could provide a model for other parts of the country.

Another group of projects are really about adding a high-tech edge to business park and regeneration projects in places such as Gateshead, Walsall and Belfast. Providing a state-of-the-art fibre infrastructure in such places is probably no more than any good private developer would do, but it provides an opportunity to dramatise the project and help to attract inward investment.

Then there are a number of projects focused more on helping the poorest or most remote communities. Almost without exception, these have not yet got beyond the initial planning and feasibility study stages. By the time they have got firm plans in view, commercial NGA rollouts will probably be well established. In these circumstances, the best strategy for most of them will be to provide the seed money or trail-blazing which will bring commercial operators in to places they would otherwise pass by.

BT – Ebbsfleet and other pilots

BT’s former flagship project for NGA on a greenfield site is starting to look much less significant than it once did. For years the Land Securities development at Ebbsfleet Valley was presented as the pioneering location for fibre-to-the-premises in Britain. Now it has at last arrived it looks much more modest.

People started moving in to the first district to be developed, Springhead Park, in September 2008 but there will only be 600 homes there. With the UK housing market in free fall, Land Securities is now talking of taking up to 25 years to reach the original target of 10,000 homes for the whole development. Clearly Ebbsfleet is not going to make a major contribution to the rollout of NGA in Britain

But Ebbsfleet Valley does have an FTTP infrastructure, installed by BT Openreach and available to all ISPs on equal terms, with tempting offers of free lines to get them started. So far BT Retail is the only taker, and it has won consent to a variation of its universal service conditions from Ofcom so that it can provide special discounts to participants in its pilot trial. Reflecting a scaled-down view of Ebbsfleet’s growth, the consent covers only 300 participants, up to December 2009.

The project has got under way and BT has set up a web-page, at http://www.ebbsfleet.bt.com/, which invites the public to “Experience a digital home of the future, today, with the fastest broadband connection speeds available to residential customers in the UK.” Not yet though – as of November 2008 it concludes “Come back soon - This page will be updated regularly with more information.”

But now that BT has announced plans – although still conditional – to roll out mainly FTTC-based NGA to 40% of homes and businesses in the UK the focus will shift to Openreach’s other projects. The first step in the programme will be operating trials in two areas, Muswell Hill in North London and Whitchurch in Cardiff, due to start in the Summer of 2009.

After that, market rollout of the full 40%-coverage plan is due to start in early 2010 – not much more than a year away. Some major political and financial decisions will have to be made in the meantime if that is to happen on schedule – not to mention the technical and engineering issues.

H2O – sewer fibre for Bournemouth and Dundee

The only other player to make a major public commitment to NGA so far is H2O. At the other end of the corporate scale from BT, H2O has become well known as the company which is planning to put broadband down the nation’s sewers. Using its proprietary “Focus” (for Fibre Optical Cable Underground Sewer) System, H2O has already installed campus networks at two Scottish universities – Aberdeen and Napier, in Edinburgh – and announced schemes to fibre two large British towns, Bournemouth and Dundee. With 88,000 and 55,000 homes passed respectively, H2O claims this as the biggest FTTP scheme in Europe.

The company has started the actual roll-out to end users in Bournemouth and if it keeps to its announced schedule Dundee should not be far behind. The service is being branded as “Fibrecity”, at http://www.fibrecity.eu/.

On Fibrecity’s Bournemouth pages local residents are offered the opportunity to apply for a free fibre-optic line to their homes. This simply means bringing the cable to their premises, it does not include connecting or providing any actual service over it. Once their application is accepted, residents will be given 28 days to take up the offer of free connection.